More on the New York Wedding-Venue Discrimination Case
Yesterday I wrote about a New York case in which a commercial wedding venue claims that it has a constitutional right to discriminate against same-sex couples, in violation of New York state law, when renting out its facility. New York Law Journal now has a report on the oral argument.
Lawyers for the wedding venue argued that merely by renting the facility for a same-sex couple to use for its wedding—on the same terms that the venue rents to other tenants—the venue's owners are being forced to "endorse a viewpoint with which they disagree" in violation of the First Amendment.
Religious Refusal of the Day: New York Wedding Venue Discriminates Against Same-Sex Couple
One of the more farfetched attempts to use religion to discriminate is on display in a case working its way through the New York courts. The owners of a commercial wedding venue refused to rent their venue to a same-sex couple who wanted to use it for their wedding. Unsurprisingly, the New York Division of Human Rights concluded that the wedding venue's refusal to rent to the couple violated the state's antidiscrimination law.